Materials and The Tactility Factory Charlotte Sleigh

I really like the idea of being experimental with materials and combining things that you wouldn't usually think of putting together. I want to try embedding things into clay , I have been thinking about pushing leaves into clay I'm not sure why but I think it's worth trying every idea that comes to me as in previous projects I haven't, I've been fairly safe and just stuck to materials and techniques I know. This didn't get the most out of my projects and I really want to push myself this time and create something unexpected. I quite like the idea of trapping a natural object in a man made material.

A design group which has inspired me to think about experimenting with materials is Tactility Factory, this was one of the groups we were given at the start of the project. I found their work intreguing but I never thought I would end up wanting to do any further research on them. They are known for a product called 'Girlie Concrete' they transform concrete into something completely different by addind materials such as velvet and linen.

Linen

Velvet

They have done many different projects with this technique. One which caught my attention on their website was Iceberg House. Here they created a fireplace surround using concrete and velvet.

They distressed the velvet to create "a more informal and softer feel within the living room.". I found this inetersting as you wouldn'y associate the word softer with concrete so it just shows how you can change the identity of a material. I think my focus at the moment is to try and create something that's suprising out of the ordinary. I have just though as well that I could try and experiemnt with engraving into different materials using the laser cutter.